Volunteer. It’s a word we hear frequently. We volunteer at church, at our children’s schools, and around the neighborhood. But is it a word we associate with Jesus?

“Volunteer” comes from a Latin word that means “willing” or “acting without compulsion.”

We all have a deep need to understand the Gospel in terms that are meaningful to us – that resonate in the deepest part of who we are.

A significant minority of men and women incarcerated in the United States speak Spanish as their primary language.

Some people like to run in the morning. I am not one of those people. On a recent morning, however, as a concession to a major heat wave, I wanted to get out and get my miles done before the heat index rose above 100 degrees.

My Prison Fellowship Racing teammates and I had to help one another get over an eight-foot wall just to get into the race orientation area. At the Tough Mudder challenge race in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last month, teamwork was key right from the beginning.

There’s a solution to crime, and it’s been staring us in the face for a long time. It’s not more education. It’s not better economic policies or a police officer on every corner. Economics, legislation, and policing are all important, of course, and followers of Jesus should be working vigorously in every area to promote justice and peace, but none of those things will actually solve the problem of crime where it starts: in the human heart.

Frontlines is a video series that brings you close to the work of Prison Fellowship through the lens of Prison Fellowship Ministries CEO Jim Liske’s encounters with the inmates and families. In the latest edition, Jim visits “Vince,” a new inmate at a detention center in Hawaii.

My father lived through the Great Depression. Like many men and women who experienced that period of want, he has a hard time throwing things away. He has sheds full of things he has saved, because “someone might need it someday.”

At a recent conference in England I had the opportunity to hear Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek. Bill has often said that “the local church is the hope of the world.” I couldn’t agree more! As the Body of Christ, who is the Light of the World, the local church is God’s Plan A to heal the woundedness of individuals, families, and the culture.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.”– Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)

Vision is destiny. Our feet will generally take us where our eyes are focused, so if we want to get anywhere, we had better have a clear picture of where we’re headed.

Restoration is the theme of God’s Word and the purpose of His activity throughout history.

The early chapters of Genesis tell us how a loving God built an environment where His image-bearers, the crown of His creation, could dwell in perfect harmony with Him, with one another, and with all created things.

At a graduation ceremony for students completing Prison Fellowship’s four-year Prisoners to Pastors program, a tearful dad confessed to me, “I thought my son would never complete anything but a prison sentence!”

We were at South Bay Correctional Institution in Florida.

There’s a story of a German pilot in World War II. He was one “kill” short of earning the Iron Cross when he spotted an American B-17 bomber crew in trouble. They’d already taken heavy fire from Nazi guns, and they would have been easy prey.

A Seattle Times article recounts the story of 12-year-old Orlando, a boy whose father fled from the law and whose mother was committed to a mental hospital. Not yet a teenager, Orlando was left in charge of seven siblings, including a set of triplets still in diapers.

Video footage from Monday’s tragedy shows that, a split-second after the deafening blast near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, confused crowds, including runners already near exhaustion, scrambled for a place of safety. But among them were some who ran back – toward the smoke, toward the roar, toward the danger – to help the wounded.

The appalling murder of Tom Clements, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, appears to be part of a growing trend of violence against criminal justice officials. Since the beginning of the year, brazen attacks have also taken the lives of the Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney, his wife, and a lead prosecutor.